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Posted by: Mardrax May 6 2011, 02:18 PM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w06zvM2x_lw

Posted by: Stahlseele May 6 2011, 02:42 PM

why's it disturbing to you?
as long as the girls are cute, i am okay with this.
Technically, it shows some higher brain activity at least . .

Posted by: Bigity May 6 2011, 03:12 PM

What's next? Some Elcor style speech patterns?

Mournful Lament: A technology to determine mood from brainwaves and we make cat ears out of it.

Posted by: CanRay May 6 2011, 03:27 PM

R&D takes money, which means you need a marketable item. Say what you will, lots of furries out there with too much disposable income.

EDIT: Would you rather Emotitoys?

Posted by: Rasumichin May 6 2011, 03:57 PM

People are also working on brainwave-directed cars with some success, but it's a lot easier to make marketable cat ears than a rigger control that meets safety standards.

Posted by: KCKitsune May 6 2011, 04:03 PM

Why is it disturbing? Sure it may not be your cup of tea, but to others, it's pretty darn cool.

Also, like CanRay said, R&D takes money and these can offset that cost by using the tech and making products NOW, rather than sitting on the tech until you have a "real" product to go to the market.

Posted by: Irion May 6 2011, 04:09 PM

Guys, it is a prove of concept.

Posted by: longbowrocks May 6 2011, 04:14 PM

Japan is a great place. This is the first step to a brighter future.

Posted by: Draco18s May 6 2011, 04:28 PM

So. In the three years since I was in college and another senior project from my classmates was a game that used "brain reading" technology that had oodles of inputs (63 separate variables) we still only know one factor?

Every brain-interface device like this uses a generic "concentration" meter. And its been like this for five years. Seriously, wth.

Posted by: longbowrocks May 6 2011, 04:32 PM

Did that project work for multiple people? I would think variances would make it only work as intended for a select few.

Posted by: Draco18s May 6 2011, 04:54 PM

There's a training portion where the program and the player "get to know each other" as it were.

Basically, it takes a base-line reading, then asks you to concentrate and relax a few times.

It worked for just about everyone (not that I ever got to test it). They'd even try and confuse it by having the baseline high.

I will admit that the sensor structure has gotten smaller. But really, we should be focusing on determining what the other 60 some signals are.

Posted by: Dez384 May 6 2011, 10:35 PM

It's not really like that though. It just measures how much action is going on in your brain, not what you are actually think.

I saw a toy that used this tech a few months ago. You used your mind to levitate a ball through hoops.

Posted by: CanRay May 6 2011, 11:21 PM

Someday I'll have my many flying guns around me controlled by my murder-thoughts.

Posted by: longbowrocks May 6 2011, 11:22 PM

It's kinda sad, but I don't think I would be able to use those cat ears. At least they would look spastic since I only concentrate in short bursts of less than a second.

Posted by: Rasumichin May 7 2011, 03:48 AM

This would actually be an accurate represantation of what they'll probably look like on most people.
Given what i've seen so far about trode net operated vehicles (which seem to use a much more intricate interface), you have to focus about 5-6 seconds for a simple "turn left" or "turn right" command.
I could see these cat ears requiring at least equal amounts of concentration.
I wonder how much training (and how many takes while filming) it took that nekomimi in the linked video to pull off her performance like that.
I mean, it looked really natural and cat-like and not forced at all.
That must take some effort with present technology.

Also makes me wonder again why RC didn't include an Exotic Ears qualitiy.

Posted by: TheOOB May 7 2011, 03:55 AM

I imagine it will always take some effort to control objects with mental impulses, especially those that don't use pre-existing motor skills(like replacement limbs), but within 50 years that technology will be so common everyone will be trained in it maybe before they can walk.

Posted by: Deschain May 7 2011, 04:21 AM

Read this and immediately thought of http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=400.

Posted by: Yerameyahu May 7 2011, 04:34 AM

Let's not be silly: they don't look at all natural. They look like a Furby. Cheap nylon, jerky, random. In fact, the smart way to build these would be a simple random movement program, and rely on the stupidity of humans to attribute intent and meaning to the movements. For years (and up to today?), people attributed intelligence to the 100% random shuffle feature of their iPods, saying that it was matching their mood or sequencing songs that went together, and so on. (No, not the 'play higher-rated songs more often' feature.)

Posted by: CanRay May 7 2011, 04:37 AM

Yeah, and look at how frightened the Pentagon was of Furbies!

Posted by: Yerameyahu May 7 2011, 04:39 AM

I didn't say these things weren't frightening.

Posted by: longbowrocks May 7 2011, 04:40 AM

Ugh. Just looking at that Angelic Layer page makes me think of Battle Athletes Victory. I can even see it ending in alternative love interest.

Posted by: longbowrocks May 7 2011, 04:42 AM

Knowing Mac products, it's sensible to think that.
Knowing Mac users it's sensible to expect them to think that. (Zing!)

Posted by: KarmaInferno May 7 2011, 04:43 AM

So what happens if you plunk one of these on an actual cat?




-k

Posted by: Halflife May 7 2011, 04:48 AM

Humans are pattern seeking animals. It is bred into us at the genetic level. Without it how would we ever get to see penises in Disney movies,

Posted by: Yerameyahu May 7 2011, 04:51 AM

Psh. iPods aren't (well, weren't) Macs.

I agree, Halflife. That's why my version is cheaper and better.

Posted by: longbowrocks May 7 2011, 04:52 AM

Singularity. Inversion of thought and reality. Wacko tea maniacs, and timepieces melting over foliage. You know the drill.

Posted by: CanRay May 7 2011, 04:57 AM

Or the same thing that happens when you put a piece of buttered bread on the back of a cat.

Posted by: longbowrocks May 7 2011, 05:10 AM

*dang. I always forget that whitespace gets removed, so ascii art doesn't post well.

Suffice to say it was an expression of horror.

Posted by: Draco18s May 7 2011, 05:13 AM

Posted by: Mardrax May 7 2011, 08:40 AM

Don't know, really. Baseline reaction? Somehow uncanny valley related, perhaps?

It's not to say I don't like the concept. It's pretty awesome, and definitely a way to open up funding for this kind of tech.

And yeah, there's a demo video of the thing in action on random people, where it acts, well, random.
No way anyone's ever going to get this stuff to work properly without those baseline readings or extensive training.

Posted by: hobgoblin May 7 2011, 03:56 PM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TZDkICB6iU